No built in Flash or PDF reader. Still lags on new Web tech support (WebGL, e.g.).

Bottom Line

Windows 7 users can now enjoy the speed and compatibility of Internet Explorer 10, formerly the sole province of Windows 8.

PerformanceThe browser team at Microsoft has made a big point of performance improvements in Internet Explorer 10, claiming a full 20 percent improvement. There are several ways to measure performance. The easiest is by running synthetic micro benchmarks, which usually execute JavaScript. These, while not exactly real world, can nevertheless be indicators of real world performance.

Possibly the most realistic way to test browser speed is simply to test how long it takes to load webpages, and this type of study has been done by traffic monitoring organizations like New Relic, Strangeloop, and Compuware. Unfortunately, none of these have released testing for IE10, but the first two show IE9 in the lead, while the last (which doesn't account for hardware configurations) shows Chrome at the top. I've seen comparisons on other tech sites where the reviewer simply watches a page load from the Internet: This produces a completely unreliable, unrepeatable, and in the end, un-helpful set of results. I will simply say that in anecdotal testing of several content heavy sites on a fast broadband connection, IE10 loads them with speed comparable to Chrome, Firefox, and the rest.

For the JavaScript benchmarks, I ran the browsers through SunSpider 0.9.1, Google V8 v.7, Google Octane, and Mozilla Kraken 1.1. I ran the tests on a Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz Windows 7 (32-bit) laptop with 3GB of DDR2 memory. I shut down any unessential processes ran the tests five times, removed the top and bottom score, and averaged the three remaining scores.

Reformat tables so that the title is above the table, in bold, instead of heading up the second column; remember, we talked about this. Also, it might be nice to understand what each test actually tests for. Also, if you're going to put IE9 in some tables, put it in all the tables.

Browser

SunSpider 0.9.1 Score in ms(lower is better)

Internet Explorer 10

180

Google Chrome 25

238

Internet Explorer 9

260

Firefox 19

277

Opera 12

302

Maxthon 4

328

If you were to go just by SunSpider, you'd say that IE10 is the fastest browser in the West. It does improve by an incredible 30 percent over its predecessor, and it beats Chrome by a sturdy 24 percent.

Browser

Google V8 (v.7) Score (higher is better)

Google Chrome 25

10111

Maxthon 4

9703

Firefox 19

6817

Internet Explorer 10

4525

Opera 12

3840

Internet Explorer 9

2048

IE10 makes massive gains over IE9 in this benchmark, more than doubling its score. But even that improvement doesn't put it at the head of the class—far from it. At least it's no longer the slowest on this one.

Browser

Mozilla Kraken 1.1 Score in ms (lower is better)

Google Chrome 25

2660

Maxthon 4

3156

Firefox 19

3247

Internet Explorer 10

8829

Opera 12

12336

Internet Explorer 9

16794

On Mozilla's Kraken JavaScript benchmark, a lower timing in milliseconds is faster, IE10 again shows massive improvements, but again this doesn't place it in the lead. Chrome has actually overtaken the test maker's own browser, Firefox, by a significant margin, but Mozilla's browser still handily beats IE on this one. The Kraken benchmark test takes quite a bit longer to run, and Mozilla claims it more accurately represents real-world browsing than the others.

Startup SpeedAlso important for any software's performance profile is startup time: The last thing you want when you're itching to get to that favorite site is to wait around for the browser to start up. This applies to both the first time you run the browser after starting up (cold start) and on subsequent runs (warm starts). How fast you can get to that website is greatly affected by this, if your browser isn't already running. The browsers have mostly gotten close on this measure, but there are still some differences. I used the same test system to get these timings:

Browser

Cold Startup Time (seconds)

Warm Startup Time (seconds)

Internet Explorer 10

2.5

0.9

Internet Explorer 9

3.0

1.3

Chrome 25

3.1

0.8

Firefox 19

3.3

1.1

Maxthon 4

4.3

1.5

Opera 12

10.1

2.9

So startup speed clearly isn't a problem for Internet Explorer, though Chrome edges it out a tad in restarts.

Hardware AccelerationAnother area of browser speedup that IE has been a leader in is hardware acceleration—using your PC's graphics card to accelerate browsing. Microsoft has made available demos that test this. I use two of these, Psychedelic Browsing and Particle Acceleration, since they produce comparable benchmark results. Psychedelic Browsing spins a color wheel while playing a whirring sound, and then produces a result in RPMs. Mozilla also offers a hardware acceleration test, but at this point that's just a pass-fail, not showing any differentiation among browsers that do implement hardware acceleration. Note I use a different test machine for Psychedelic Browsing, a 3.16GHz Core2 Duo with an Nvidia GeForce GT 240 on to take advantage of a better graphics card—results will depend heavily on your system's graphics processor.

Browser

Psychedelic BrowsingRPM (higher is better)

Internet Explorer 10

8620 (correct sound)

Internet Explorer 9

8165 (correct sound)

Firefox 19

5797 (no sound)

Google Chrome 25

5430 (correct sound)

Opera 12 (with HW acceleration enabled)

3066 (no sound)

Maxthon 4

333 (correct sound)

As the browser that introduced the concept of hardware acceleration, IE increases its lead here, though not by as drastic a margin as on some of the other benchmarks.

Particle Acceleration uses 2D Context HTML5 Canvas to spin a 3D sphere composed of smaller colored spheres, and displays several measurements. I use the Draw Time and FPS results, since they're the most consistent. No IE9 score is shown here because that browser version doesn't run on the test tablet, a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-based tablet with 4GB memory running 64-bit Windows 8 Pro:

HTML5 Particle Acceleration Benchmark

Draw Time (milliseconds— lower is better)

FPS (higher is better)

Firefox 19

6

60

Internet Explorer 10

9

60

Opera 12 (with hardware acceleration enabled)

14

60

Google Chrome 25

22

44

Maxthon 4

29

33

Firefox pulls out a surprise here, with the quickest draw time, but IE is well ahead of the rest. I don't report it since it fluctuates too much, but the test's Score result tells a different story, with IE10 ahead by many times over. I'm discussing with Microsoft how to publish reliable numbers for this Score.

Read More

About the Author

Michael Muchmore is PC Magazine?s lead analyst for software and Web applications. A native New Yorker, he has at various times headed up PC Magazine?s coverage of Web development, enterprise software, and display technologies. Michael cowrote one of the first overviews of Web Services for a general audience. Before that he worked on PC Magazine?s S... See Full Bio

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